I’m relatively optimistic that we will see significant progress towards wifi in hospitals becoming the norm in the not too distant future, particularly as recent NHS announcements seem to be indicating an exploration of allowing the public (or “patients”) to access wifi across the whole of the NHS estate. There have been some conflicting messages on this, with some suggestions that the wifi ambition is limited to staff access. But I believe it will not stop at that.

That doesn’t mean we need to be complacent, as one of the big issues is that the autonomy of individual institutions makes it next to impossible to mandate common procedures across what is a massive organisation. But I am confident the tipping point will soon be reached when it becomes an anomaly that a hospital lacks free patient wifi, such that public pressure will cause the laggards to come to the party.

Around a third of NHS hospitals (and virtually all private hospitals) in the UK now have patient wifi. And despite the doom merchants and the gatekeepers, nothing bad has happened. I still come across the old arguments about patient wifi interfering with equipment (as if patient wifi is a different flavour of wifi to that used by staff), being expensive to deploy (not true), or offering a backdoor route into compromising patient confidentiality (can anyone point me to an example of this happening?). If any of these arguments were true do you not think there would be a story about them in the Daily Mail every day? There isn’t, because it doesn’t happen. And if it doesn’t happen in the one third of hospitals which have patient wifi, why should it happen in the other two-thirds? And you can also bet the the private hospitals which have patient wifi have done it for reasons concerned with patient satisfaction.

Being cut off from regular contact with the outside world is a significant stress factor when you are in hospital. Patient wifi thus has a therapeutic benefit, and to deny it is to delay people’s recovery. Thus, it is probably true that lack of patient wifi is costing the NHS in terms of longer stays in hospital.

I’ll be testing some of this out myself shortly as I embark on the DigiWards project. In the mean time, if you haven’t already, please join the Campaign for Free Hospital Wifi, use the #hospitalwifi hashtag on twitter, and help us keep up the pressure.

This is an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while, and I’ve had significant encouragement recently to take it forward, so, I’m about to launch a crowfunding campaign and sponsorship proposal for a Digital Inclusion Campervan.

The Story So Far

Our Digital Planet Internet Station in Bristol

If you’ve been paying attention (and, if not, why not?) you will have seen that I’ve been experimenting over recent years with different methods of taking digital inclusion to where people are, as I am a believer in seeking out people in their natural environments rather than expecting them to come to centres or courses. In 2012 and 2013 I managed Nominet Trust’s Our Digital Planet Project, which took a giant photographic exhibition on how people use the internet to various city centres around the country and backed it up with a shipping container full of volunteers and laptops. I learned so much from this project, and it was such a pleasure to work with so many people who wouldn’t have dreamed of searching out a digital inclusion “centre”

But, the thing about Our Digital Planet was that it was expensive. It took a lot of resources to move all that stuff around the country, and there came a point at which the numbers of local partners able to find the cash to bring it to their area just ran out. So, I then set about seeing if the same principle could be delivered in a more mobile form.

I was fortunate to bump into Sue Jennings from Leeds Federated Housing Association at a digital inclusion get together, and this led to a collaboration which became the HUGO Project, featuring the HUGO Bus (in reality there are two buses), bringing a more mobile facility to the housing estates of Leeds, and available for hire to go elsewhere.

But even the HUGO Bus has a significant cost to moving around, and there are some places where that size of vehicle cannot go, so I am still frustrated that there is more that can be done.

And so, I now want to downscale things a bit more still. I’ve already gone from Our Digital Planet which took 2 flatbed trucks to move it around, to the HUGO Bus which is pretty mobile, but bulky. Now I want to go to the Digital Inclusion Campervan. It will be a go anywhere, reach anyone, digital inclusion facility with free wifi, tea and coffee, kit and support.

I need to raise the money to make this happen, so I am seeking sponsorship, and maybe will go down the crowdfunding route too. Scouring eBay, I reckon I can acquire a semi-decent campervan for about £7500, and I will probably need another £5k or so to kit it out and put a livery on it. To cope for contingencies, I’ll be looking to raise £15000 in total.

So, any sponsors out there want to pitch in? Sponsors will get the opportunity to have their branding on the bus, promote their products through its work, and, well, you tell me what you’d want in return.

I am excited about this, but I need to test the water first as to whether there are sponsors interested.

Yet another discussion on Twitter about the large numbers of organisations, particularly in the public and voluntary sectors, who still resist the adoption of new technologies to make their clients’ lives better, and social media to transform the way they work.

This prompts me to ask this question – does your boss do tech?

In my experience, there are still far too many organisations where there are people on the frontline who want to adopt new methods and technologies, but their organisations, directed from the top, will not respond. And I think I know why this is, at least in some cases.

Most of us these days are immersed in the use of new technologies. We communicate all the time using Twitter and Facebook, or WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Instagram. We use catchup TV services, and seek out “how to” videos on Youtube. But, if you are the Chief Executive of an organisation, you may be in the latter stages of your career, you may have thrived in working environments where there was no hint of technology, you may have had a PA to whom you dictate emails and reports, and who prints off emails and reports for you to read. And you probably work incredibly hard, put in long hours in the office, and then have a commute home. So, when you get home, all you want to do is slump in front of the TV, read a book, or maybe flick through those printed off reports and emails over a glass of wine. You are not playing computer games, you are not Skyping the relatives, you are not catching up with what your friends are up to on Facebook. In short you are insulated from new technologies, both in your working and home environments. And, given that retirement is visibly coming towards you over the horizon, you probably think that new tech is something for the next generation of leaders to deal with.

I am sorry if this stereotype, for stereotype it surely is, offends anyone. I know there are loads of CEOs who embrace new technologies, and who burn with ambition to integrate them in strategies to make their organisation work better. But, there are still too many CEOs who, in my opinion, stand in the way of progress.

So, ask yourself, “does my boss do tech”. And, if they don’t then consider if you have opportunities to ensure that they do. Don’t always do everything for them; point out the environmental damage being done by all that paper they are carrying around. Then maybe, just maybe, they might even come to like using tech and become an advocate rather than a blocker.

One of the advantages of being a freelancer is you often get to work with some very special people. For a long time now I have wanted to work with Victoria Betton whose work I have admired for a number of years. Victoria inhabits that land between the big health services and the outside world, with an uncanny ability to communicate with both, and to make things happen by bringing insiders and outsiders together.

Yesterday we had the kickoff meeting for a project we are calling DigiWards. We’ve been fortunate enough to secure some funding via the Tinder Foundation from the NHS Widening Digital Participation Fund. Using this funding, we intend to “digitise” 4 wards at the Mount Hospital, in Leeds. The Mount provides in-patient services to older people with mental health problems and dementia.

As part of the project, free wifi is being installed into the wards (a cause close to my heart), and tablet devices will be made available for use by patients and carers.

My role in the project is to provide training and support to cohorts of Digital Champions from within the hospital’s clinical staff and volunteers. I will further be involved in supporting the digital champions to deliver a range of digital engagement activities with patients and carers including digital tea parties, digital drop-in sessions, digital carers’ sessions, and digital walks (real-time walks, live streamed to patients on the ward).

This is a great opportunity both to work with some lovely people, and to implement some of the ideas I have been working on for a while in a new context. We are pretty confident that these will be the first fully digitally-enabled older people’s inpatient wards in the country (let me know if you know otherwise). I can’t wait to get started, and I will, of course, post updates here.

I am still hopeful of progress in the campaign to get free wifi for patients in all NHS hospitals, particularly after what Tim Kelsey said at an event I was present at in March (see here).

But, you know what’s really frustrating? There are a number of cases where hospitals have installed wifi and yet the patients still can’t access it because none of the staff who have regular contact with patients know anything about it. While visiting my own local hospital, I asked at the information desk how to access the wifi and was told that no one there knew.

Can someone please spread the message that it is pointless installing wifi if patients can’t access it. This is doubly frustrating for disconnected patients.

Here’s an example of a hospital wifi login screen. I was unable to get online.

This is an idea for a project which I think could be an important model for assisting with older people’s fading memories, as well as exploring and raising the profile of British Seaside towns.

I am looking for £30,000 to make this happen. Please get in touch if you can help.

Is the British seaside holiday dead?

Is there anything from it worth preserving, beyond its impact on the local economies of some fairly Isolated towns?

How important are the memories from our seaside holidays? Individually and collectively?

Can seaside memories play a role in helping people with dementia?

Everybody remembers their holidays, don’t they? For many of us they are the stand out moment of a relatively mundane year. Do you remember those long, hot afternoons on the beach, or that time staring out to sea while the rain pounded down on the roof of the car? If we are lucky enough to have holidays, they linger in the mind; they provide punctuation points in the narrative of our lives, and we return to them in our daydreams. But, how long do we remember them? Do you still remember your childhood holidays?

This project has a threefold purpose.

To connect isolated older people with their holiday memories in an interactive, real-time basis in a way which both stimulates their memories, and sparks their interest in the potential of communications technologies;

To collect holiday stories linked with particular seaside locations;

To stimulate wider interest in seaside towns as visitor destinations.

How the project will work.

This will require participation from:

Charities and agencies working with older people;

Care homes and sheltered accommodation providers;

Individual older people and their relatives and carers;

Tourism and visitor offices for seaside towns;

Local authorities and local economic development agencies in seaside towns;

Digital agencies and the local digital community in seaside towns.

Phase 1

Gathering Memories

The first stage of the project will be to collect older people’s memories of seaside holidays. This will be achieved through:

Video interviews with older people;

Collecting and digitising old photographs of holiday locations from older people and from other locations;

Blog posts and online stories

Stories emailed and archived

This material will be collected directly, by older people themselves, by friends family and support workers and collated to an online hub.

Phase 2

Curation and Training

Phase 2 of the project will be to work with the older people to help them to organise the material which stimulates their memories, and to relate those memories to specific locations. At this stage, older people, their carers, support workers and staff will be trained to interact and engage with the project. Equipment will be provided and training to use it to enable the older people to engage in real-time with Phase 3. And the locations to be visited in Phase 3 of the project will be chosen.

Phase 3

Seaside Tour

Phase 3 will be based around a seaside tour. John Popham will visit seaside locations chosen by the older people in Phase 2 of the project. During the visits he will interact with the older people directly online, using live streaming, video conference connections, and otherwise, and be guided by them as to what to see, where to visit, and who to talk to. There will be live, real-time interactions between the places and people John visits and the older people who are guiding him. This will further stimulate the memories of the older people, and encourage them to explore using new technologies to communicate and pursue their interests.

As well as interacting with older people, John’s visits will be an opportunity to explore the condition of the British seaside holiday. Guided by the older people, he will investigate what has changed, and what has stayed the same between the memories described by the older people in the project and the modern reality. This will provide opportunities for interactions with local media, local politicians and local government. The visits to each location will be maximised for publicity potential, and for the opportunities to generate discussion and debate about the past, present and future of the British seaside.

Opportunities will also be explored to collect and collate more material, gathered in the seaside locations themselves, to add to the seaside holiday memory bank and online hub.

This morning I was in the kitchen with Radio 4 on, and happened to catch an episode of this week’s Book of the Week, which is “Gold Fever” by Steve Boggan. The book is an account of how the author decided to see if it was possible to make a fortune by re-visiting the sites of the 19th Century Californian Goldrush. I have caught little bits of it throughout the week, and, from what I can tell, he didn’t succeed in making a fortune, but he did come back with some great stories featuring the characters from the original rush, and some from more recent times.

In today’s episode, he was searching for “the man”, the character who had made the most from prospecting gold in recent years. Eventually he tracked down someone who had made a small fortune from rare gold finds, but the gentleman in question now suffers from Alzheimer’s. The story recounted the author’s frustration with extracting information from the man whose memory had faded. All this changed however, when he decided to take “the man” back to the scene of his prospecting. He then came alive and bubbled over with stories about his former life.

People who work with those who have dementia often talk about their long term memories being sound, but that they can’t remember what happened yesterday. We need to do more work on stimulating memories by helping them to relive their former lives. And, I have a suspicion that, when such people spend much of their lives not being mobile or stimulated, it could just be that what happened yesterday is just not worth remembering.

And, of course, we can now use digital technologies to help stimulate memories, as in the brilliant video below. Let’s do more of this, please!

Several times during the General Election campaign I expressed my frustration and annoyance that the main use of social media by politicians seemed to be to tweet grinning selfies of themselves and their campaign teams accompanied by anodyne messages along the lines of “another great morning on the doorstep”. Apart from the fact that I never once saw anyone admitting to a difficult morning on the doorstep, I really don’t think this is a good use of social media at all. I have tweeted this to some politicians, and said it to others face-to-face. The response was usually that they considered this to be a good tool for proving to people that they were working hard on the ground. I disagree.

My alternative was to urge politicians to tell stories about what people said to them on the doorstep. I think this would be a much great contribution to political debate. And I have urged politicians to use social media to tell their own stories. Someone who did this was Naz Shah, the ultimately successful, Labour challenger to George Galloway in Bradford West. She told her story in public, and I think the public warmed to her as a result. Instead, most politicians prefer to pump out prepared versions of the party line. As Stephen Waddington has already suggested, this was not the social media election you have been waiting for.

A particular point of interest is that the Labour Party claimed to have had 5 million doorstep conversations during the campaign. 5 million conversations; just think of the stories that could have come out of those conversations if they had been prepared to tell them. And yet, despite 5 million conversations, they still didn’t see the comprehensive defeat coming. How does that work? Maybe they weren’t conversations at all. Perhaps the way politicians behave on social media is a reflection of how they operate offline too. If so, that is a measure of the challenge ahead, for all of them.

As trailed this morning, today I did a walking tour of the 10 Polling Stations nearest to my house on General Election Day. I did this to highlight the ridiculous situation that our voting system still uses 19th Century methods in 2015. I hope that we will have online voting before the country as a whole does this again.

First, here’s the story of the day.

Prelude

The Starting Point

Polling Station 1 – I voted

Polling Station 2

Polling Station 3

Polling Station 4

Polling Station 5

Polling Station 6

Polling Station 7

Polling Station 8

Polling Station 9

Polling Station 10

So, what did I learn?

Well, I learned that the terrain of Huddersfield is pretty challenging, something I already knew, but perhaps needed to be reminded of. And some of the Polling Stations were in quite hilly places. They must be difficult to get to for people with restricted mobility.

I also learned that Polling Stations are in some pretty varied places. But, in my sample of 10, there was only one, at Paddock Village Hall, that was in a place which seemed to be offering other reasons for people to be there, namely a community cafe.

And I perhaps learned most from the 40 minute break I took along the way in a pub. I overheard a couple of conversations, one involving two people who were voting today for the first time in years “because it’s important this time, isn’t it?”; and one about voting in Australia, which is not only compulsory, but, it seems, is made an occasion of, with barbecues at the Polling Stations.

I think we need to move to online voting as soon as possible. But, in the interim, barbecues at Polling Stations doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

It’s a matter of extreme frustration to me that the benefits that digital technology is bringing to all our lives are seemingly not allowed to touch the world of politics. And so it is that most of us will pick up a piece of card which came through the letterbox a few weeks ago and trudge off to a drafty school hall to place a cross on a piece of paper.

I think younger people in particular find this ridiculous, and it is a reason why many of them don’t vote. We need secure, online voting, and we need it well before the next General Election.

So, to highlight this absurdity, I have decided to spend a substantial part of this General Election Day touring the 10 nearest Polling Stations to my house. And I’ll be doing this on foot. I expect to have to buy a new pair of shoes by the end of the day. I’ll be recording my reflections on the way.